


All The Magic We Gave Off

by BronteBronte



Category: Boy Meets World, Girl Meets World
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, this was written hastily after realizing that this was a real good ship I'd been sleeping on, unestablished feelings, who will ever read this? who knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 08:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16677781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BronteBronte/pseuds/BronteBronte
Summary: His routine has become simple. He wakes up, shaves, puts on a three-piece suit, and sits at a desk for eight hours while he thinks about every wrong decision he’s made in his life.





	All The Magic We Gave Off

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from Supercut by Lorde.
> 
> This is my first fic in forever, so any notes are appreciated. It was also written in the span of a day, so uh, keep that in mind.

His routine has become simple. He wakes up, shaves, puts on a three-piece suit, and sits at a desk for eight hours while he thinks about every wrong decision he’s made in his life.

He’s playing reruns in his mind of the first time he kissed Becky Warner at the eighth grade dance and how she said he tasted like corn chips when an alert pops up reminding him he’s supposed to head to New York City that weekend. It’s over some deal with an oil pipeline, and he prepares himself for the routine of throwing money at someone until they decide that clean water is way less important than a new Jeep. He’s done it countless times before and he’s already thinking of his sales pitch as he opens the calendar details. That’s when he sees the name MATTHEWS, ERIC and his head starts spinning.

One Google search later confirms that it is in fact his Eric Matthews (who is now a senator? How does that happen?). And suddenly he’s not Jack Hunter, the charismatic businessman, but Jack Hunter, the nervous 22-year-old who can’t make his mind up about what he’s supposed to be doing. Suddenly he’s back in his apartment at Pennbrooke, looking at Rachel and Eric battle over the remote on the couch and wondering why he can’t decide who looks prettier. He wonders if he can switch departments before the workday ends.

He spends the four-hour train ride from South Station pretending he’s paying attention to the episode of This American Life he has playing in his ears. Some guy is telling a story about how he fooled his whole school into thinking he was an Ugandan transfer student, and Jack is wondering if he can somehow fake an accent and fool Eric into thinking he definitely isn’t the best friend he hasn’t been able to get ahold of in the last ten years. Jack actually just might pull it off, and on that principle alone he decides it is not a good idea. No, unfortunately this time Jack would actually just have to face the person he’s been running from for a decade.

As soon as his bags hit his hotel bed, he asks the concierge where the nearest bar is, because he may have to be sober for a meeting, but no one said he had to be sober the night before. That’s become a part of his routine too. The 10 pm bourbon that turns into the 12 am hookup that turns into the 2 am awkward conversation as he tries to leave a random woman’s bedroom.

Luckily tonight he finds no luck at the bars and instead passes out after four and half beers watching the preview channel the hotel tv plays on a loop. He wakes up at 6 am to some romcom trailer. Some supermodel kisses a B-list actor as an upbeat pop song plays.

He spends an hour throwing up in the hotel bathroom.

He’s not sure how it didn’t connect that the cafe Topanga’s might belong to the only person he’s ever met who was named Topanga, yet it finally hits him that he might not just be running into the person he’s been running from for a while, but also all the friends he left too.  
It’s a relief when he looks inside and sees its just him. He’s different, his hair is shorter, he’s a little broader, but it's him. Jack can tell that without seeing his face.

They spend the first half of the conversation discussing the fact that Jack now stands for everything he was against in college. He tries to explain to Eric that sometimes you make the wrong decision, and it almost seems like a cruel joke to have to explain wrong decisions to Eric, like the universe was practicing an exercise in irony. They spend the second half making awkward conversation, avoiding that there is ten years of unspoken tension between them. It isn’t until Eric invites him out for the night that Jack realizes that he will still follow Eric anywhere he goes. 

A middle school dance is not what he had in mind.

It’s fun for the first hour. He runs into Cory and his daughter, who seems way too young to be dealing with any of the problems she tells them about. She’s having trouble deciding what boy she should date and who she loves, and he tells her to choose her friends (which is ironic, and he definitely leaves out the part about being in love with her uncle). 

By the second hour he’s wondering why he’s in a room with fifty thirteen-year-olds, and why he hasn’t been asked to leave by school security. The song has changed to a slow dance, and kids are awkwardly filling in the dance floor and holding each other at arm’s length. He’s swaying along to the ballad when he’s startled by a hand on his shoulder and looks over to see Eric smiling at him.

“Let’s get out of here dude.”   
He doesn’t have to ask Jack twice.

They end up walking along the outskirts of Bryant Park as a hush falls over them. It starts to hit that they aren’t the 22-year-old roommates who used to stare at each other too long. They’re adults now, pushing 40, and they’re not dumb college kids anymore. Now they’re just dumb adults. They couldn’t pretend that there wasn’t anything happening.

They had pretended before. When they would sit on the couch at the apartment with their legs just touching, when they wrestled over the remote, when they gave each other kisses on the cheek as a joke. They had pretended that it wasn’t there. That there wasn’t this undeniable thing between them. 

Eric stops when they reach the subway station. He stands just in front of the steps. For 9 pm on a Saturday it is surprisingly quiet, and Jack is lucky he can’t hear his heart thumping over the whirring of the subway passing by underneath them.  
“I wanted to call you.” Eric says. Jack takes a deep breath. The air shifts. “Right after you left I almost went on a plane to find you. Cory talked me out of it.”

Jack can’t stop staring at his feet, like maybe if he stares at the ground he won’t have to face how intimate this is. The words tumble out before he can catch them, barely above a whisper.

“I always wanted you to come find me.”

That’s when he feels the tension fall. He doesn’t know exactly how it happens, but he feels the hand tilt his face upward and feels his back hit the gate above the stairs as Eric connects their lips. 

He wouldn’t say there are fireworks and butterflies and symphonies playing. But what he feels instead is a calm. This. This was the home he had been missing for the last ten years. 

They spend a few moments just kissing. Just happy because no one will tell them to stop, including themselves. When they pull back for air Eric rests his forehead against Jack’s and smiles at him.

“Found you.”


End file.
